It didn’t matter just how much mental fortitude any one person had. It was completely natural for them to be put into panic and be overwhelmed by everything. Being hit now by his own soul attack made the black-hooded man be temporarily unable to control his soulforce and bodily actions.

“Bzz...”

He still had preventative measures put up into place, such as the three jade disk soul armaments revolving around him. As if responding to an imminent attack, the three disks started to tremble and shine with a green light before covering the man behind them with a bubble of energy to protect him.

It was a near instantaneous reaction to the soul attack and came up before Bai Yunfei’s Fire-tipped Spear could even come into contact with it, though the part where the two would collide was especially thick in preparation of contact.

But. The moment when the spear looked like it was going to be stopped by the seemingly impenetrable barrier, it melded straight through without pause! As if nothing was even there, the spear slid straight on through!

The +13 additional effect of the Fire-tipped Spear, activated!

Expend half the user’s soulforce to ignore any one elemental-based defense upon the next strike.

Cooldown of 10 minutes.

Bai Yunfei was using the ultimate effect of his spear for this one final attack!

It didn’t matter if the barrier was ten-times as strong as what it was now, the spear would ignore it all the same!

Now beyond the ephemeral barrier, the spear was well on its way to strike down the man behind it. The heat from the spear was hot enough to cause the hair of the man to catch on fire, but before the tip could reach his throat for the final blow...

“Clang!!”

A white object blocked the spear from going forward—one of the three jade disks had stopped it!

The energy radiated from the three disks hadn’t been enough to stop the spear, so the man used the disk itself to stop the spear just like how Bai Yunfei used the Cataclysmic Seal to stop the black needle.

It still remained to be seen if these jade disks were high-heaven or mid-heaven, but regardless, it seemed that not even the 4500 attack-power strong Fire-tipped Spear was able to pierce through them...

“Crack...”

But!

A crisp cracking resonated in the air. Mere moments after the spear touched upon the disks, the disks fractured into multiple pieces and fell apart!

It was only a moment for the spear to break through the first disk and be completely free from any further obstruction. Neither of the other two disks was even close enough to stop the spear before it was just three centimeters away from the man’s throat!

No matter which way or angle Bai Yunfei looked at it, the man had no chance of surviving his thrust. Pleased, Bai Yunfei watched as the spear grow ever the closer towards the man’s throat.

But when it looked like the spear was about to strike—

The man disappeared into thin air right before the tip of the spear could stab into him!

A strange wisp of energy came out from the disk when it broke apart under the spear’s attack. Enveloped by energy so rich that it created ripples in the space around him, the man was then surrounded by a secondary outline of black light when the two other jade disks lit up.

𝐟𝗿𝐞𝚎𝚠𝐞𝚋𝕟𝐨𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝕔𝕠𝚖

And then he was gone!

“Whoosh!!” Bai Yunfei’s spear traveled straight through the air, leading to him stumbling forward two steps at the unexpected miss.

“What the—!”

Bewildered, Bai Yunfei looked all around himself to find where his enemy could appear next. A hundred steps to his right, there was a flash of light before a person appeared from it—it was the black-hooded youth!

“Ahhhh!!”

A shriek erupted from the man’s voice as if his terror of Bai Yunfei had gripped at his heart and soul with the strength of a soul attack. Brandishing his hand, he sent the black needle forward while he himself tried to run backward as fast as possible while also covering himself with a layer of elemental darkness to aid his defenses.

The brunt of the soul attack from earlier had already worn off, but the aftermath was still lingering on his mind. He stumbled backward a few dozen steps before looking back to Bai Yunfei. His face was slack-jawed, and his hand was clutched at his throat. He could feel a trickle of blood.

Some sort of unknown technique transported the youth away from the spear before it was too late. Before he could be transported away though, the spear had still left a small wound deep enough to draw some blood from his throat.

The bleeding had already stopped by the time he was aware that he was injured. It was just a superficial wound, but still, he was terrified at the fact that he was even brought to such a state.

That terror soon bled away into anger, and soon his eyes started to burst with wrathful indignation...

He quivered. No longer was he as calm as before, and even his face was contorted with anger. If looks could kill, Bai Yunfei would’ve been dead many times over and his body burned into ashes. Wisps of elemental darkness bent and twisted around his person to form a malevolent skull around him.

“I’m going to kill you!!”

A primal roar erupted again from him again. Launching himself off the ground, the man leaped well over a hundred meters into the air before coming to a stop at the peak of his leap to stare down at Bai Yunfei.

The clouds darkened when the man made his leap. By the time he came to a stop, the clouds were already nearly pitch-black and well over a hundred meters in radius!

It was a cloud made entirely from elemental darkness!

While Bai Yunfei was busy staring at the dark clouds over them, the other man was already flashing through dozens of hand seals. With each seal made, his soulforce leaped and twisted from within his body, though there was a difference now; he was back at the levels of an Early-stage Soul King. He must’ve canceled out one of his power-boosting soul skills.

A lot of elemental darkness was pouring out from his body in a torrent of forbidding energy to feed into the dark clouds Bai Yunfei was looking at!

“Die!!”

Elated fury flashed through the man’s eyes as he roared. Bringing his right hand up, he swiped it back down with his palm stretched outwards as if to simulate a crushing motion onto Bai Yunfei!

“Rumble!!!”

An ear-deafening roll of thunder exploded from the clouds. From within the dark clouds of elemental darkness, a whirlpool had started to form directly above Bai Yunfei’s head. The dark energy rolled about with increasing intensity as elemental darkness gathered in the space above the man’s right hand. When the man brought his hand down, a giant black palm descended down from the whirlpool!

This technique was presumably something that used the owner’s motions as a medium. The elemental darkness had formed a giant palm to come crashing down onto Bai Yunfei!

It was only just a few dozen meters when it first came out from the whirlpool, but as it continued to fall, the palm expanded to nearly a hundred meters in circumference!

Compared to the palm, Bai Yunfei was basically just an ant in size, and if he were to be hit by a powerful technique like that, he’d be squished as easily as an ant as well...

What a fast reaction this man possessed. The +13 additional effect drained away half of Bai Yunfei’s remaining reserves, and there was hardly any time in between his failed attack to now to recover a significant amount of soulforce. Bai Yunfei didn’t even expect to have to dodge from an attack like this and was a little taken aback. By the time he was even fully aware of what was going on, the palm was already dropping down onto him!

The notion of escape didn’t even cross his mind, though. His head tilted upwards to stare down at the clouds in determination. He wouldn’t run away!

Now was the time for both people to unleash their final blows, how could he run away from this and give up the advantage to the enemy?!

Bai Yunfei stabbed the Fire-tipped Spear into the ground next to him and raised both hands to his chest. In a flurry of motions, he began to go through a set of familiar seals!

“Bang....” A sea of fire immediately exploded out into the world as soon as he finished his last seal!

The flames coiled around his body shortly after they materialized. Crawling and coiling up his body when he grunted, the flames soon came to rest around his arms. Arching his upper half back a bit, Bai Yunfei primed his arms back—

—And then he lashed out!

Only two pillars of fire could be seen after that, accompanied by a furious roar that quaked the earth with its vocal strength. It was only when the ‘tail’ could be seen escaping from Bai Yunfei’s hand that anyone else could realize what Bai Yunfei had unleashed.

The Dual Dragon Burst!!

A small mountain-sized dark palm. Two dragons burning as bright as the sun.

One going down, and the other going up.

And at about three hundred meters above the ground, they collided!